Many people already to this every day and may not know the benefits
A doctor has suggested that maintaining a healthy diet combined with trying one specific approach – intermittent fasting – could help lower your risk of common health conditions. The expert is a specialist in pulmonary and critical care medicine and took to TikTok to explain it all.
Under the username @neenziemd, Dr Neena Chandrasekaran said: “If you are somebody who does intermittent fasting, this has now been shown to reverse the brain aging by 2.6 years.”
When it comes to putting the diet into action, she explained the fasting “needs to be done for about eight weeks – or two months – in order to benefit from it.” Speaking about the research which “was just published in nature communications”, she said the people that intermittently fasted did not have “big meals” but instead had a few smaller meals.
The people in this category “experienced a reversal of brain aging by MRIs”, she noted adding: “Intermittent fasting along with a good diet can improve cognitive function, decreased risk of Alzheimer’s dementia and other dementia down the line.
“This has also been shown to improve insulin resistance and decrease risk of diabetes”, she concluded. In another study which looked ‘intermittent and periodic fasting, longevity and disease’ found similar results.
This study found that: “Advancing age is the major risk factor for most major diseases, including cancer, diabetes and neurodegenerative, cardiovascular and immunological diseases. Because IF, PF and FMD cycles have been shown to slow down and partially reverse cellular aging in rodent models, a number of studies have investigated their potential application to the prevention and treatment of age-related diseases.”
- Intermittent fasting (IF): An eating pattern in which short periods of fasting (16–48 hours) and eating periods (8–120 hours) are alternated.
- Periodic fasting (PF): A period of intense dietary restriction involving either complete abstinence from food (water-only fasting) or a significantly calorie-reduced diet (FMD) lasting more than two days, followed by an undefined phase of eating freely (ad libitum refeeding). This type of prolonged fasting (PF) can be repeated, but only on rare occasions.
- Fasting-mimicking diet (FMD): A diet designed to achieve fasting-like effects on the serum levels of IGF-1, IGFBP-1, glucose and ketone bodies, while providing both macro- and micronutrients to minimize the burden and adverse effects of water-only fasting.